


Maps Of Blood And Flesh

by ruric



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Community: slashthedrabble, Graphic decription of tattoo process, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-28
Updated: 2005-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-07 20:32:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The true cost of what he's bought hasn't just been measured in pain, and mapped in blood and flesh, but has been purchased with the sacrifice of his voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maps Of Blood And Flesh

Spread-eagled, sacrificial victim to their art, he's hyper-aware yet unable to find any distraction to the sensations assaulting him. 

Soft, supple leather is wound tightly around wrists, ankles, knees, elbows and shoulders - and firmly knotted into iron rings sunk into the floor. Tensing muscles only results in the leather biting deeper into his skin and he can already feel bruises forming. The silver collar around his neck is loose enough to allow him a little more movement. He can turn his head to the left or right for all the good that does him. The weight of the heavy links of silver chain around his waist burns coldly through the slim protection of the thin, black cotton pants they provided.

He's pinned, immobile and vulnerable, a specimen for them to work on. 

The floor is icy – pressing solidly into him, touching everywhere – and he's conscious of the heat leaching rapidly from exposed skin into the ever hungry, cold marble beneath. Tall iron sconces positioned at his feet, hands and above his head, bear thick purple candles, whose flickering light barely illuminates his body, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. He can't distinguish walls or roof, can just about see the shimmer of light reflecting off the polished arched buttresses leading upward into the shadows.

It's cold down here, deep inside the earth and it's no trick of the subdued light, each exhaled breath leaves a slight puff of mist in front of his eyes. He can see the rise and fall of his bare chest, listen to the rasp of his breath as he tries not to pant, can feel moisture begin to pool damply on his skin. Each shiver makes the chain links click together. He's lost sensation in fingers and toes and can’t help but wonder whether they're waiting until his entire body is numbed before they start.

He came here, where the vastness of mountains tower over him, where there's wide open spaces and solitude, hoping that he'd develop perspective and find some kind of peace. But he's discovered he can't run away from himself and everything he was trying to leave behind has followed him. 

Every night when he closes his eyes he's haunted. 

Haunted by soft lips that brush across his skin finding each sensitive spot and nerve ending, by ghostly fingers tracing remembered patterns along the curve and swell of muscle, by the weight of a body he can still feel covering him and holding him close. In his dreams he hears a voice, whispering words of desire, telling him he's wanted, needed, necessary. 

He could maybe have lived with the haunting, but the dreams turned to nightmares and his gentle ghost has become a betrayer. The lines of communication he kept open to people back home confirm the truth. He's tired of shuddering into wakefulness with the stark realisation that everything he believed is a lie. He has no choice. He has to go back, he has to finish it.

Behind him the guttural chanting of the shaman increases, staccato rhythm matching the pounding of his heart, as incantation after incantation builds to a crescendo, ending in a hoarse triumphant shout.

The whisper of bare feet breaks the echoing silence and he glances down his prone body towards the sound. At first it seems like the shadows are swelling and moving, the room coming alive to press closer to him. Then his eyes make sense of the optical illusion and he sees three figures completely cloaked in black silk. With a soft rustle, quiet as a butterfly wing, they slide out of gossamer robes, which slither down their skin to pool at their feet. Black hair falls from the crown of their heads almost to their toes, a liquid shimmer over pale ivory skin, parting to reveal tantalising glimpses of the supple young bodies beneath. 

Two of them kneel, one by each wrist and the third straddles his waist, her hair cascading down onto his belly in silky, feather-soft caresses. He sucks in a breath, the heat of her thighs so intense it feels like it's burning his chilled flesh.

In any other situation he'd be turned on, now all he feels is the curl of terror deep in his gut and the only thing he can think is "What the fuck am I doing?"

The shaman begins chanting again, drawing closer with each hoarsely croaked word, but he can't look away from the woman straddling him. Her hair masks her face and he's aware with a creeping horror that if she shook it back what he might see may not be human. He's seen weird shit in his life, it went with the territory, he learned not to blink, to try and mask surprise or horror. But helpless as he is now? He's not sure he could deal.

There's a scrape and shuffle of steps, the chanting is closer, and he feels a foot brush the top of his head. Looking up he sees grey, bony, sinewy fingers wrapped around the edges of a bronze tray, which passes over his head and lowers over his torso. 

The women reach up, each removing a wooden bowl, heavily carved with dragons, gargoyles and demon faces brought writhing to life by the flickering candlelight. He knows the names of only some of the arcane ingredients that went into filling those bowls. He does know, down to the last cent, exactly how much it cost him to pay for it, including the three types of demon blood and the price for the shaman to cast his mystical mojo over the whole process.

Whatever the hell is in the bowls is smoking, and it hits the back of his throat with an acridity that makes him cough and his eyes water. Blinking to clear his vision, he's not sure whether he really wants to see or whether it would be better to keep his eyes closed.

He catches the warm glint of flame on metal and watches the woman straddling him, her elegant fingers curling around the long needle. 

He doesn't want to be here, not whilst they do this to his body.

Taking a deep breath he thinks about home, about plains and heat and dust, about the old house, and a bunch of tangled-haired scruffy kids, playing in the waist high grass during endlessly long summer evenings. 

He thinks about blonde hair and blue eyes and soft, soft skin that he ached to touch. Thinks about her gentle pallor replaced by bright make up and a slash of red lipstick, human face sliding to game face as her fangs teasingly brushed his neck. He remembers the demon staring at him out of her altered face, the taunting of her predatory voice, puzzlement in the brutal, cold yellow eyes. He remembers knowing he was going to die and realising he just didn't mind.

He thinks about LA and brown eyes he can't forget. How it felt when the punches and slaps finally turned to caresses and then demanding, hungry, desperate touches. Thinks about the voice that convinced him he could walk away, he could change if he wanted to. Remembers how he trusted that voice and the intensity of the gaze turned on him and wonders what happened to make it all go so very wrong.

He thinks about anything to make this unreal and to get him some place, any place, other than here.

The triple assault of the sharp jabs of needles at wrists and low on his ribcage drag him back and for one precious moment he believes he can cope with this, knows that he's endured much worse. There's a dull, not quite ring of metal against wood, and then the needles are back, and the breath he's just taken whistles out past his teeth in a shocked hiss.

Fuck! It feels like they're dropping acid onto him, using the needles to push it past the fragile boundary of skin, letting it sizzle into muscle and flesh and eat down towards bone. Their heads are bent so closely over him and their intricate work, their breath drifts onto his skin, the simple movement of air exacerbating the pain. 

They work in perfect synchronicity – jab, burn, whispered exhaled-breath and he tries to match his own breathing to theirs in the hope it'll make it easier to endure. But he can't focus or find a rhythm.

They'd warned him before binding him down. They'd been specific about what this would cost him – in time, money, pain and sacrifice. Specific about the fact once they'd started they wouldn't stop, no matter what he said, how much he begged or what he offered them. They'd told him he'd scream before this was over – and he hadn't really believed them, because he didn't believe anything could hurt as much as losing his hand.

He can't help the involuntary reaction of his own body, twisting to get away from the needles, but there's no leverage, no space to allow real movement and anything he does just drives the needles deeper and makes the leather and silver bite into his skin.

He can't get out of his head, the pain is too present, too close, too real. So he tries to stay with it, to ground himself through it. 

He watches as the needles pierce his skin, notes the bright drops of red blood welling around the points and feels their warm breath. Counts the beats it takes for them to withdraw the needles, reach back, drip them into the bowls and bring them back to jab into him again. Finally, finally finds a rhythm he can match.

Checks how much they've done and sees only a gentle swirl written at the point where his ribs curve in to the centre of his chest, the base of a rune or glyph appearing on each forearm. 

He's not cold any longer. 

Sweat runs from his brow into his hair, slides from his temples to behind his ears and down the back of his neck. It gathers between his shoulder blades, collects in his armpits and slicks across his chest making him look like he's just stepped out of a shower.

His breath has gone raspy because he's lost the rhythm again and there's a sound bubbling up from his lungs that he's sure will be a scream if it makes it to his throat. He bites down, vulnerable flesh of his inner cheek caught between his teeth and the metallic taste of blood coats his tongue.

There's an explosion of red behind his eyelids and pain spins him away. Time is immaterial and there's nothing beyond the burning and the whisper of breath and sweat sliding over his skin, mingling his own blood with the demon blood they're using to tattoo him with secret alphabets and symbols.

Moisture wells beneath tightly closed eyes and escapes, volcanic tracks of salty tears sliding down his face, and he hears a voice rasp out one sobbed word.

"Please."

He can't get a full breath, his body one long agonising burn and somewhere, sometime during this hell of his own making he starts to scream.

By the time they loosen the bonds he's screamed himself hoarse. 

He's unable to do more than lie still, drawing ragged breath after breath as the candle light dims and flickers into total blackness.

He wakes the next day skin feeling like he's been flayed and he's not in the underground room. He's lying on a wooden pallet, resting on bare earth, in a small circular stone room, with an arched door through which he can see blue sky.

The shapes on his chest move under his skin, in a wild dance, like mating eels seeking a resting place. Watching them makes his head spin and his stomach flip, so he raises one arm and sees the glyphs curving around from wrist to shoulder but thankfully they're still and not moving. Thought and movement are beyond him and he concentrates on breathing and counting heartbeats until night comes again.

By the dawn of the second day the tattoos have settled and he's able to crawl to his clothes, gingerly pull on jeans and boots, and slide into his soft worn shirt, all the while trying not to move too much as his skin still feels raw and abraded. 

They've left provisions with his rucksack, water, well wrapped parcels of food. It takes him three days to walk back to the nearest village. Three days before he sees another person and opens his mouth to ask for a drink.

Hearing the hoarse rasp he knows the true cost of what he's bought hasn't just been measured in pain, and mapped in blood and flesh but has been purchased with the sacrifice of his voice. 

The only question that remains to be answered is whether it was worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "touch" prompt on the LJ community [slashthedrabble](http://slashthedrabble.livejournal.com/).


End file.
